Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day029.10
Last-Modified: 2000/07/25
Q. As we discussed earlier today in this court, recent
discoveries have very little bearing on your competence or
honesty as an historian. Page 86 Mr Irving. What is it
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that Professor Fleming is reciting on the top of that page?
A. He is referring to the Muller document, about which of
course I have made representations to this court, dated
August 1st 1941.
Q. Yes. The Muller document saying the Fuhrer is to have
running or continuous information, or reports, about the
work of the Einsatzgruppen in the East.
A. Got to be kept au courant.
Q. Laufend is the German.
A. I was using a French phrase on the work of the
Einsatzgruppen in the East, yes.
Q. Do you remember that I put it to you in cross-examination
that, contrary to what you said in court, you were indeed
familiar with the Muller order of 1st August?
A. You put to me, yes.
Q. Are you saying you did not read this passage in Fleming's book?
A. I have to say that you are asking me about something 18
years later but I can say with great confidence that, as
there are no kind of markings on those pages, then, with
the high degree of probability, I did not read them.
Q. Then I asked you by reference to this very passage, "Have
you read Gerald Fleming's book?" And your answer is,
"I have not read that book".
A. I have not read the book as such, no. But may I also say
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that had I seen that passage about the Muller document,
which is very interesting, obviously, I would have written
to my friends at the Institute of History or the very next
time I went there, because that is the source he gives
there, footnote 172, and on my next visit to Munich after
1982 I would have said, "Can I, by the way, have a look at
that file, please?" and, obviously, that is one indication
that I did not see that document. But I have to say that
I will have submissions to make about that document when
the time comes unless the Defence can produce the exact
file of where it is stated to be.
Q. Do not worry; we are working on it, Mr Irving. Don't you
worry about that.
A. Well, I am just reminding...
Q. We have plenty of time and lots of contacts. Many rabbits ----
A. Well, I need time after I have been told the file number,
of course, to make use of it.
Q. There are many rabbits in this burrow. Do you remember,
Mr Irving, that in your account of the conference on 16th
and 17th April 1943 you transposed a remark made by Hitler
on 16th as though it had been made on the 17th?
A. Yes, that is one of the two errors I have corrected in the
new edition of my Hitler book.
Q. I am pleased to hear it. My reason for asking you that is
this. You have been aware of what the true chronology was
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at least since 1977, have you not?
A. Yes -- wait a minute, wait -- yes, since 197.
Q. Martin Broszat pointed it out to you?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you remember writing to a Mr Ashton on 31st December 1978?
A. Oh, yes, clearly. What did I say? Can we see the letter, please?
Q. I will but I will just read it out.
A. I am being sarcastic.
Q. We may not need to get it out. "As for your views on the
1943 Horthy document, I believe I have replied to you
quite fully about this, drawing your attention to Hitler's
explicit remark to the Reichs vorweise" one day previously?
A. Yes.
Q. --- "to the effect that nobody was asking him to kill the Jews"?
A. Yes.
Q. So in 1978 you were fully conscious that Hitler's remark,
"There is no need for that" ----
A. Was one day earlier.
Q. --- was made on a previous day?
A. Yes.
Q. And you never corrected it, did you?
A. No. But you know my views on that, Mr Rampton, that
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whether the remark is dated in my book on April 6th or
April 17th, I think that is a very flimsy peg and the hat
falls on the floor ----
Q. I hear what you say, Mr Irving.
A. I beg your pardon?
Q. I said I hear what you say.
A. Well, you interrupted me before I had finished.
Q. That was the excuse, if I can put it like that, that you
gave us last time.
A. In fact, it is one of the errors I corrected in the latest
edition because it is a minor error, but it is worth picking up.
Q. Yes. I want to ask you about another document from 1942.
My Lord, this is the Kinner Report from Zamosk in Poland
on 16th December 1942. I believe your Lordship will find
that in file K2, tab 4, page 19A (vi). For once, my Lord,
we have the English as well as the German. This is an
English translation, Mr Irving, but you would probably
prefer to use the German, I do not know.
A. I have them both here.
Q. It concerns, does it not, a transport of 644 Poles to the
work camp at Auschwitz on 10th December 1942, am I right?
A. Yes.
Q. If you turn to look at the second page under the
subheading or by the underlined subheading "arbeit
Einsatzfahigskeit".
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A. In German, yes, I have that.
Q. Yes, or the English. "Capacity for employment as
labour". We find this: "SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Halmeier",
in fact, that is a mistake for Almeier, "explained that
only Poles capable of work should be delivered so as to
avoid as far as possible any useless burdening of the camp
and also of the delivery traffic. In order to relieve the
camp, limited people, idiots, cripples and sick people
must be removed", the word is "entfernt", "from the same",
that is the camp, "by liquidation". The word there is
"liquidation", is it not?
A. Yes -- very explicit.
Q. It is very explicit. There again we see another example,
as in Himmler's closing speech of 4th October 1943, of
removal and liquidation, evacuation and extermination
being used synonymously, do we not?
A. Yes.
Q. "This measure", that is to say liquidation, "however
becomes more difficult to implement because, according to
an order from the RSHA", the English is translated as "in
opposition to"?
A. "In contrast to", I think.
Q. Yes, "in contrast to", I was going to suggest that, "in
contrast to the measures applied to the Jews, the Poles
must die a natural death." Does that not mean, Mr Irving,
in fairly unvarnished terms, that whereas Poles must be
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kept alive until they die, the Jews can be killed?
A. I think that is the interpretation on those words, yes.
Q. And this is in relation to procedures at Auschwitz, is it not?
A. It is in relation to Auschwitz, yes.
Q. Yes, because Aumeier was at Auschwitz, was he not?
A. Yes.
Q. Is that not some sort of rather powerful evidence that
Auschwitz, so far as Jews were concerned, was so far from
being a work camp a place where they were being
exterminated, liquidated?
A. Well, I am not saying they were being exterminated; it is
a place where they are not being protected and ----
Q. They can be killed at will, can they not?
A. That is right, yes, according to this document.
Q. Are you mistrustful of this document?
A. No. I am not challenging the authenticity of the document
at all, but it is ----
MR JUSTICE GRAY: But are you challenging what is said here,
that the policy appears to have been, in relation at least
to this transportation, that any Jews who were not fit for
labour would be liquidated?
A. The comment I would I make on this document, and obviously
it is an important document, I am not challenging that
respect, but is written by an SS, what, Untersturmfuhrer
which is, what -- I have to look at my military dictionary
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and see the rank, but it is an SS corporal, I think.
Q. Well, he is quoting an SS Haupsturmfuhrer which is going
slightly higher up the hierarchy.
A. He is what?
Q. He is quoting Aumeier.
A. But the actual document has written or drafted by an SS
corporal and we have had this kind of problem with
documents before, that you have to be very careful if you
are going to look at actual words used or actual senses
conveyed, and I do not want to put it more strongly than
that, just to say that -- I do not want to put it more
strongly than that. I just want to say that it is -- the
corporal's language, he is not a lawyer drafting a document.
MR RAMPTON: No, if he had been, Mr Irving, he might have used
rather more guarded language?
A. No, I do not ----
Q. That is the advantage of these janitorial documents, is it
not, that one sees the truth?
A. I agree it is an important document. It says the Jews are
being killed at Auschwitz and this has not been denied.
Q. The word is actually "liquidate"?
A. Yes.
Q. "Liquidation".
A. Yes. Well, that is why I say that this is the kind of
language the corporals would probably have used to each
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other.
Q. Yes. Now we are going to go even further back in time,
Mr Irving. We are going to go back via your book Goebbels
1935, 33, 34, and 32, but we are going to do it in one
sentence, as it were. Have you got your Goebbels book, Mr Irving?
A. Yes. My Lord page.
Q. My Lord, page 46 of Goebbels.
A. Yes.
Q. My Lord, this relates to pages 692 to 698 of Professor
Evans' report. It has to do with criminal statistics in
Berlin and to some extent Germany but Berlin in 1932 to
'35, and the way in which Mr Irving has represented the
Jewish share of those criminal statistics, if I may put it
like that.
Generally speaking, in this part of the book you
are discussing, in general terms, how it was that Goebbels
came to be so radical and anti-Semite?
A. No.
Q. This is general context, is it not?
A. I do not think so. I am explaining how Goebbels came to
be so successful in Berlin with his anti-Semitism, if
I can put it like that?
Q. OK. It does not matter. It is all about Berlin, is it not?
A. Yes, and why his anti-Semitism found a fertile audience.
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Q. Yes, in the first, second and third paragraphs on page 46
there are some references to the Jewish deputy police
chief, Dr Wernhart Weiss, and then at the bottom of the
page, it starts: "Dr Goebbels would shun no libel to
blacken his", that is Dr Weiss's, "name. Instinctively
carrying on an ancient tradition of name calling he seized
on Dr Weiss' nickname of 'Isidor' and commissioned the
scurrilous Nazi marching song about him. He would
highlight", that is Goebbels, "every malfeasance of the
criminal demimondes and identify it as Jewish. In these
closing years of the Weimar Republic he was unfortunately
not always wrong."
So now, Mr Irving, we are getting a recitation
of the true facts as opposed to Goebbels' propaganda.
"In 1930 Jews would be convicted in 42 of 210
known narcotics smuggling cases; in 1932 69 of the 272
known international narcotics dealers were Jewish. Jews
were arrested in over 60 per cent of the cases concerning
the running of illegal gambling dens; 193 of the 411
pickpockets arrested in 1932 were Jews. In 1932 no fewer
than 31,000 cases of fraud, mainly insurance swindles,
would be committed by Jews". Then we are referred to
footnote 29 which we will find on pages 547 to 548.
The footnote for that last statement "In 1932 no
fewer than 31,000 cases of fraud, mainly insurance
swindles, would be committed by Jews", footnote 29 on page
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547 says: "Interpol figures" ----
A. Excuse me. The footnote refers to everything ----
Q. OK.
A. --- prior to that.

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